


thought i knew what colors were before i saw you

by maviswrites



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Adora (She-Ra) Needs a Hug, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Disabled Character, Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Lesbian Disaster Adora (She-Ra), Minor Angella/Micah (She-Ra), Minor Bow/Glimmer (She-Ra), Minor Netossa/Spinnerella (She-Ra), Minor Perfuma/Scorpia (She-Ra), Multi, POV Alternating, Redemption, Self-Esteem Issues, Shadow Weaver | Light Spinner (She-Ra)'s A+ Parenting, Slow Burn, Soulmate Marks Glow Once They Meet, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:22:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24556864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maviswrites/pseuds/maviswrites
Summary: The Horde does not, as a rule, believe in soulmates. In the Rebellion and on Etheria, soulmates are a fact of life.There are two non-Etherians, both Horde members, who bear soul-marks. This is their story.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Entrapta/Hordak (She-Ra)
Comments: 33
Kudos: 357





	thought i knew what colors were before i saw you

**Author's Note:**

> Basically canon-compliant, with the extra additions of soulmates. Etherian soulmates bear matching soul-marks on their bodies. They are colorless to their bearer until that person meets their soulmate, at which point they can see their mark's colors.
> 
> I feel like Horde Prime would be very against soulmates and the concept of people being bonded to anyone who wasn’t himself. Hordak’s thoughts on the subject, and therefore the Etherian Horde's, are borne from that upbringing.
> 
> Title is from The Mountain Goats' "Ice Blue."

The Horde does not, as a rule, believe in soulmates.

Horde Prime is against such things. In his quest to grace entire planets in his light, he has often focused particularly on planets where people wear matching marks on their skin, or hum the same tunes in their heads, or share dreams. Some can write on each other’s skin with just their thoughts; some are tied together by a literal string of fate. It's not exactly common within the universe, but there are plenty of planets where the inhabitants have some way or another of finding their perfect match. Prime conquers these worlds, perhaps more mercilessly than he does the others that do not have such strong indicators of soulmates, and he rarely addresses the concept to his brothers.

Needless to say, clones are not supposed to have soul-marks, or share dreams, or anything else that might indicate the existence of a soulmate. It should be impossible, given that they share the hive-mind, given that they rarely even speak to beings outside of each other.

The clone hides the mark when he first notices it. It appears to be yet another defect, mounting among the others that have caused the holes in his arms and the weakness of his body. His eyes are slowly starting to redden, no matter how many times Horde Prime purifies them back to their natural green. The last thing he needs is some strange, gray drawing of a rhombus with indecipherable, connective lines inside inside it on the back of his neck.

If he is lucky, Horde Prime will never notice these defects.

(Horde Prime notices all.)

Shortly after the defects are discovered, the clone is sent to the front lines to die a glorious death in service to Horde Prime, rather than needlessly suffer and remain a drain on the Horde’s resources. He is not the first to have defects—cloning science is never foolproof—and he is not the first to be handed this fate by their Brother.

But then the portal envelops him. It draws him in to another world where there are no stars, and that, he is sure, has never happened to a Horde clone before.

On the other side of the portal, on this planet called Etheria by its inhabitants, he is forced to adjust. He is forced to give himself a name. To name himself after Prime would be a grievous insult to Big Brother’s superiority, yet to name himself something outside of the Horde entirely smacks of heresy.

He ends up naming himself Hordak, the name slightly distasteful on his lips and yet necessary to distinguish himself to the Scorpions, who have never heard of the Horde.

(What kind of backwater planet has never heard of the great Horde?)

He amasses resources, stockpiles technology, and discovers relatively quickly that the reason for the lack of stars is that the planet resides in an empty dimension. He has never heard of such a thing—he doubts even Horde Prime has ever heard of such a thing—and yet he is stuck here. His science skills are rudimentary, having only worked with the development of other clones and the portal technology on Horde Prime’s ships, and yet he has no choice but to try to find his way back using what little talents he has, all while his body deteriorates before his eyes.

What else can he do, but try to make his way back to Horde Prime with Etheria under his thumb, and thereby be (hopefully) welcomed back with open arms?

The Scorpions help, and slowly but surely, he builds his own weak, twisted version of the Horde. Where it had once been clean and _pure_ , now he must work with an army of orphans, half-breeds, rejects, and whoever is willing to join. He finds himself learning more about the various species of Etheria, including the mysterious First Ones and their advanced tech.

One thing that he learns near-immediately: almost all the people of Etheria bear a soul-mark. The soul-marks are made up of shimmering, vibrant colors, but those who have them cannot see the colors of their own soul-mark until they meet their soulmate. It’s considered rude or unkind to tell someone what color or colors their soul-mark bears, until they can find out for themselves.

Shadow Weaver, who quickly makes her way to second-in-command after using her magic to help the Horde and creating a connection with the Black Garnet, tells him about them. Ironically, she’s one of the only ones in the Horde that doesn’t have a visible soul-mark.

“People do not always find their soulmate,” she tells him at one of their briefings. She brings a hand up to her mask. “Mine was on my cheek. It’s… gone, now. Before I could find them. I never knew what color it was.”

“Is it a distraction?” he asks. That’s all he cares about.

She runs a black fingernail down the edge of her mask. “Yes, Lord Hordak. To many of our recruits, it could indeed be a distraction. Trying to find their partner amongst the rubble of a conquered village, or being overly protective of another soldier that they are mated to… it could become a burden to the Horde.”

“Then do not speak of it,” he says. “The recruits do not need to know about their marks. Those that knew before, make sure they know not to teach the younglings, and that they do not care more about their marks than our goal. Soulmates are an unnecessary part of the Horde.”

“Yes, Lord Hordak.”

Time passes. His research continues. The recruits fight better, as Shadow Weaver believed, when they don’t know what all they could really lose during a battle.

He finds a baby, another product of a portal like him, and brings her back to the Fright Zone. What else is to be done with her? It’s a free recruit, and she cannot be left alone in a field, the way he was when his portal took him.

He hands her off to Shadow Weaver, who names her, and she becomes just another member of the Horde, fading into the background. Still, he remembers the mark that runs straight up her spine, a sword with a golden hilt and a blue gem in its center. The mark is unusually large amongst those he’s noticed, and it stands out where she does not.

The years pass. The Scorpions die out, except for their princess, a clawed, overenthusiastic girl who learns quickly that the Fright Zone is not hers to command, and neither is the Black Garnet. Her mark, a red rose behind her ear, is nearly invisible against her loud personality. Still, she is one of the few who actually asks about the marks, and for that he remembers it.

“What is it?” she asks one of the older training officers one day, when Hordak is close enough to hear the conversation. “I can see it in the mirror sometimes, but it’s just a bunch of gray lines. But I feel this… connection to it. Where did it come from?”

“Shut up!” the officer hisses back, eyes darting to look over at Hordak, fearful. “It’s no concern of yours.”

“But it’s—”

“I _said_ , shut it!”

He moves on before he can hear the rest of the conversation. He doesn’t care. He runs a thumb along the port on the back of his neck, remembers the mark that got him sent to the front lines.

_It can’t be._

He has a project to complete, a Big Brother to rejoin. He cannot afford to care.

They're supposed to be asleep.

"Catra?" Adora whispers.

Catra stirs from where she's curled up at the edge of the bed. "Yeah?"

"Mine hurts."

Groaning, she crawls up to the rest of the bed where Adora is sitting up. They do this some nights, even when they're not supposed to. She runs her hand over Adora's spine, under her shirt, just where that weird marking is. "You know we're not supposed to talk about those. Shadow Weaver would kill us. Kill _me_ , anyway. You'd probably get a medal, for no reason."

"I know. I just... it feels better when you scratch at it."

She sighs and smiles, using her claws to carefully rub over Adora's mark of a sword. Their marks match, for some reason. "I'm gonna ask about it again."

"Don't!" Adora hisses. "You were _just_ talking about Shadow Weaver killing you."

"You'll protect me, won't you, O Favored One?"

Adora rolls her eyes and flops onto her stomach, giving Catra a better access point to rub her back. "Shadow Weaver is just trying to keep us focused. We have to destroy the Rebellion, remember? We don't have time to be worrying about these things."

"Whatever." Catra scratches even more lightly, until Adora's breathing softens. "Ready to sleep again?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

Catra is the only recruit Hordak knows of that asks, often, about her soul-mark. He never seen it for himself, as it’s apparently hidden beneath the fur on her back, but Shadow Weaver often complains about her asking. “She is disrespectful, and she asks more and more with every year,” she spits out at a daily briefing. “She encourages the other recruits to ask about their marks.”

“Tell them whatever you were telling them before she started asking questions,” he says dismissively, not bothering to look up from his research.

“But, Lord Hordak—”

“I cannot afford to be distracted by the queries of a recruit!” He is so close, _so close_ to figuring out the secrets of the portal. “That is your concern, not mine.”

“Lord Hordak, her mark matches Adora’s. The same sword, in the same colors.” She stands perfectly still, immovable, as he spins around to lock his eyes on hers. “They are soulmates.”

Adora. The child in the fields. She has proven herself in training, but her connection to Catra has always been a liability. “Do they know?”

“They know they can see the colors of their marks, when almost all of the other cadets cannot,” she says slyly. “And the know that their marks are the same, but they do not know what that means. I have not told them, and neither has anyone else. No one ever will. But their connection is undeniable. I have tried to weaken it, to break it, but they are bonded. Even if they never figure out the true nature of that bond, they are each other’s weakness.”

“They are of age?”

“Yes.”

“Promote Adora to Force Captain, then. She has done well. They will be separated enough that they can no longer spend all their time together. Perhaps that will prevent them from weakening the Horde through their connection. If that fails, we will try a different route.” He turns his eyes back to his screen. “Is that all?”

“Yes. Thank you, Lord Hordak.”

He returns to his work.

A week later, Force Captain Adora disappears.

“What is that?” Adora hisses at the princess as they walk through the Whispering Woods. They’ve escaped that monster, and apparently being a princess is _contagious_ , and that mark on both of the other two’s arms is weirding her out. “Is that some symbol everyone in the Rebellion gets?”

Glimmer, confused, looks at the bow and arrow, etched in pinks and yellows, on her arm. “Um, no? That’s mine and Bow’s soul-mark.”

“Your what-now?”

Bow squeals, the way he has been ever since they captured the Horde soldier and realized she doesn't understand Etherian culture at all. “You guys don’t have _soul-marks_?!”

Adora shrugs, rolling her eyes. “I don’t have a bow and arrow on me, last I checked.”

“Of course you don’t,” Glimmer spits back. “Only soulmates have the same mark! You’d have something different. Like, I don’t know, a flower, or a bird. Actually, knowing the Horde, you monsters probably have a skull and crossbones, or a cannon, or—”

“A sword?” she asks, as the hair on the back of her neck stands up. The forest is warm, but she’s suddenly freezing.

“Yeah, a sword!” Bow cuts in enthusiastically. He hesitates. “Wait… do you actually have a sword?”

“On my back,” she nods, unwilling to show it to them. She’d have to turn her back to them, and that’s not something she wants to do just yet. “It’s all silver and yellow and blue and… that’s why I wanted that, actually,” she nods to the sword that the princess is holding far away from her. “It looks like that.”

" _You can see the colors_!” Bow screeches.

He might be asking a question, but she can’t tell from his overexcited tone. “Um… yeah,” she says. “Why, is that weird? I can see the colors of your guys’ bow and arrow, too.”

“Glimmer and I couldn’t see the colors of them until we met,” he says. “Soulmates can’t see the colors of their own soul-marks until they meet each other! So, you must already know your soulmate!”

“My soulmate,” she repeats blankly. “Does that… does that mean something?”

Bow gasps. “Glimmer, we have to keep her,” he whispers frantically.

“No, we don’t,” the princess responds flatly, walking steadily ahead.

“Yes, we do! She doesn’t even know what _soulmates_ are!”

Glimmer sighs and stops, turning to Adora. She keeps the sword far away, still, and her tone is nonchalant and completely matter of fact. “Your soulmate is the person your soul has bonded to; whether romantic or platonic, you will have a deep, unbreakable connection with this person,” she recites, as if from a book she’s read several times. “Soulmates can find each other based on matching marks, which they are only able to see the colors of if and when they meet. Soul-marks can appear on any part of the body. The nature of the soul-mark is usually representative of an item that is important to at least one of the two soulmates, something that shows their connection.”

“…Like your bow and arrow?” Adora asks.

“Exactly. It’s Bow’s weapon, and we fight in the Rebellion together. It’s a representation of what unites us.” She turns to Bow, raising an eyebrow expectantly. “Are we good now?”

He shrugs in acquiescence, and they keep walking.

About two minutes later, Adora comes to an abrupt standstill. “What are you doing?” Glimmer scolds her. “Are you _trying_ to slow us down so the Horde can find us?”

“It’s just… I know who has my matching mark,” Adora whispers. She's always known, but she's never known what that _means_.

“That’s great!” Bow cheers. “Unless… wait, that means it’s someone from the Horde, right?”

“Right.”

“Well,” he looks conflicted, then brightens. “Well, we’ll find them, and you can bring them over to our side! And we can teach them all about soulmates, too!”

For a moment, she has hope. Especially when she sees how good and kind the Rebellion really is.

But the next time she sees Catra, it’s on the battlefield at Thaymor, and she hates She-Ra, and Adora too. And Catra’s walking back to the Horde, walking away from her.

Hordak promotes Catra in Adora’s place; she’s not as incompetent as Shadow Weaver suggested, though she is incredibly willful. But she’s spurred on, her ambition strengthened by the loss of Adora and her determination to rise up in the ranks. She and the Scorpion princess work together well, according to the reports he receives.

And then they capture a princess _and_ her soulmate from the Princess Prom, only to lose both of them when the Rebellion invades.

Imp—the failed clone he could not force himself to eliminate, a sign of his defects if there ever was one—tells him of the new princess, the one left behind, that has an affinity for First Ones tech and bot-building. He lets her stay, thinking nothing of it as long as she stays out of his way.

After all, they already have Scorpia. What’s one more princess, as long as she proves herself useful?

Adora quickly notices the soul-marks of those around her in Bright Moon, once she’s aware of their existence.

There’s Bow and Glimmer’s, obviously; Glimmer is still quick to tell her that they aren’t “together" together, whatever that means. “We’re too young,” she tells Adora dismissively. “And my mom would love it _way_ too much, so we’re taking our time before we figure out if it’s romantic or platonic.”

Queen Angella bears the mark of a crown at the hollow of her throat, still luminously silver against her skin. The queen wears a necklace to hide it, but it’s still easy to see. Marks don’t fade even when someone’s soulmate dies; King Micah has been gone for years, but the crown still lights up the skin around her collarbones.

Spinnerella and Netossa apparently share a mark on their thighs, but their outfits cover them, so Adora never actually sees them. “It’s two scepters interlocked,” Spinnerella explains to her one day. “All golds and reds and purples. That’s how we both knew our soulmate was also a princess. Plus, we’ve known each other since we were kids—a benefit of growing up during the first Alliance.”

Mermista and Sea Hawk both have a ship at sea on the palms of their left hands, made up of rich browns and swirling blues and greens, but Mermista steadfastly ignores it when asked about it. It's like she tries to pretend that her soulmate doesn't even exist. Sea Hawk, on the other hand, bemoans that it’s the one ship he can never set on fire. “Nor would I want to,” he adds quickly. “But still, the temptation…”

Frosta has the mark of a vividly blue icicle on her ankle, but she hasn’t met her soulmate yet, and she’s too young to seem to care about it yet, anyway. Perfuma wears a bright red rose behind her ear, only visible when she moves her hair out of the way, but she never seems fazed by her unfound soulmate. Nothing seems to bother her, actually.

Entrapta must have a mark, Adora thinks, but she never sees it, and the tech-crazy princess never brings it up herself before they invade the Fright Zone, when they… when they lose her.

Adora lays in bed at night, on the firm and wonderful cot her best friends gave her, and balances the sword in her hands. She has a duty to Bright Moon, to the people of Etheria, and it’s one that she’ll gladly fulfill, and yet—

She misses the feeling of Catra, curled up at her feet. Scratching her back gently and lightly, on those nights when her mark hurt. She misses her _soulmate_ , who doesn’t want anything to do with her.

At the battle of Bright Moon, Catra's claws rake down her back. It's not gentle or light now. She screams. The pain's enough that not even She-Ra protects her.

That night, when she cranes her neck to look at it in the mirror, the dried blood is in near-perfect lines on either side of the blade that is her soul-mark. She looks at the lines, knowing they will become scars, and she cries.

The princess finds her way into his lab, and Hordak… doesn’t mind.

Well, he _minds_ , especially at first, but she talks her way into staying. She fixes his work, doing something he would never have thought of, and she makes it _better_.

He teaches her about other planets, countless galaxies of them, and she lights up at the thought of it. And he’s… he’s never taught anyone in the Horde anything about where he came from, but she _revels_ in the information. They can share in the knowledge, and she does not ask anything else of him.

She does not ask him about his life before he came to Etheria, and for that he is grateful. He can squash down the conflicted feelings he has about Horde Prime, about how his Brother would undoubtedly disapprove of his connection with the princess. He can pretend those feelings don’t exist, and she lets him, even though she must sense when he is holding something back.

Her name is Entrapta, and she is valuable, and she stays. She’s his lab partner.

They work together for months, improving and perfecting the portal device, and then he finds out from Imp that Shadow Weaver has escaped and Catra has lied about it. Entrapta intercedes on Catra’s behalf while he rages in the lab, reducing the Force Captain’s sentence from elimination to banishment to the Crimson Waste. Normally, such weakness and compassion would make him lose respect for someone.

But from Entrapta, it’s… endearing, that she genuinely wants to help her friend. “I would do the same for you,” she tells him, when she’s justifying to him why Catra should be allowed to live. “I don’t want her to die for one mistake.”

“She lied to me,” he says harshly. “Such things cannot be allowed, especially from my second-in-command.”

“So get her out of here,” Entrapta shrugs. “Show everyone that you won’t allow liars to rise up in the Horde, that they’ll be punished. But don’t give her a death sentence.”

Entrapta doesn’t know that the Crimson Waste is basically a death sentence anyway, but Hordak agrees, mostly to make her smile, so he can watch her record the results into her device happily.

The princesses don’t understand, Adora thinks, how much soulmates just _don’t matter_ to the Horde. In the Rebellion, people purposefully search for their soulmate, comparing marks with strangers if they haven’t already found them. People display their marks, wearing jewelry or makeup to accentuate them, for the most part—though some, like Spinnerella and Netossa, keep theirs private for personal reasons.

Soul-marks are a point of pride. There’s etiquette around it, too. Glimmer explains that to her one day, interrupting her just before she starts to remark to Frosta on how blue her mark is. “It’s just not _done_!” Glimmer exclaims, once they’re far enough away that Frosta won’t hear. They’re just finishing up a battle with some bots, but the field looks clear for now.

“But… it’s an icicle,” Adora says. “I mean, what other color could it be?”

“Still,” Glimmer says, but she doesn’t elaborate.

The only one who actually does seem to understand is Shadow Weaver, which is just _weird_ because Adora is still adjusting to her presence in Bright Moon. She’s a prisoner, sure, and Queen Angella keeps telling Adora to ignore her, but it’s difficult, especially when she can’t stop thinking about the way they grew up.

“Why were we never told about soulmates in the Horde?” Adora demands one day, striding into the Bright Moon “prison” without warning.

The guards jump, but Shadow Weaver doesn’t budge. “Found out about that, did you,” she says casually from where she’s seated on the floor.

“Um, yeah,” she says sarcastically, sitting down across from her. “It’s kind of one of the most important things about Etheria, I’ve found. And I have one of the soul-marks, despite being an alien or First One or whatever. Why weren’t we ever told about it?”

“It would have been a distraction to you,” Shadow Weaver says.

She scoffs. “Th-that’s ridiculous!”

“Oh, really?” Shadow Weaver asks. She turns to look at Adora, but it’s impossible to tell where her gaze really is under that mask. “Are you telling me that the Bright Moon princess doesn’t worry about her little archer friend more than anyone else? That the queen doesn’t still long for Micah—” she falters, then straightens, “—who she lost in battle _years_ ago?”

“No,” Adora says stubbornly. “It’s not a distraction, and we have a right to know.”

Shadow Weaver leans in, nearly cupping a hand to her cheek before Adora pulls away. “Then are you telling me,” Shadow Weaver asks innocently, “that when you realized that your mark matches Catra’s, it didn’t affect your ability to fight her in battle?”

Without meaning to, her thoughts drift back to when she and Catra were trapped in the Beacon together. She had tried to keep Catra at arm’s length, to remember that they were enemies now and a soul-mark wouldn’t change anything, and yet it was impossible. The only thing that kept them apart was Catra and her bitterness, so bitter that Adora couldn’t even bring herself to tell her that they were soulmates. How could it possibly mean anything to Catra, who had never heard of it and would continue to hate her anyway?

She still can’t hate Catra, despite everything she’s done: kidnapping Glimmer and Bow, leaving her to die in the Beacon, attacking Bright Moon, all of it. Maybe she’ll never be able to hate her.

“I thought so,” Shadow Weaver says when she doesn’t reply.

Without a word, Adora slips out of the room. She has other things she needs to focus on; she needs to go to the Crimson Waste and find what Mara left for them.

The portal is useless without some kind of “key,” according to Entrapta, and so he sends her away. It would be nice to have her stay, but he needs to recalibrate some of the mechanical suit that keeps him alive. She should not have to see that.

But Entrapta finds him, weak and ready to collapse, and she isn’t… disgusted by him. She doesn’t hate his defects. Instead, she tries to feed him and care for him. She listens to the story of his past and she doesn’t seem as horrified by the prospect of cloning as others have, or the fact that his was a failure.

“Imperfection is beautiful,” she tells him, “at least, to me.”

He doesn’t know how to respond to that—if there’s even a way—and so he watches, baffled, as she builds him an exoskeleton armor. Inside it, he feels healthy, strong. Any who discount her must be utter fools, and he tells her so.

“Thanks. I like being friends with you, too,” she says far too honestly for him to handle, looking up at him as she balances on her hair. He doesn’t know what to say to that. His arms drop to his sides, bewildered.

Later, Entrapta is looking over his armor one more time when a section of her hair glides over the port on the back of his neck. She stiffens, just slightly, as she focuses on it. “What’s this?” she asks quietly, like she already knows.

“It’s a port,” he says. “It is how Horde Prime connects—”

“Not that,” she interrupts. She moves her hair down a little lower, and he feels it touching the spot where the strange marking on his neck is.

He hasn’t allowed himself to think about it in earnest in years, since the Scorpion princess asked about her soul-mark and he decided _it couldn't be_ , and a shiver runs up his spine. “Another defect,” he says roughly.

“I don’t know about that,” Entrapta says slowly, stretching the words out, but she drops the matter. Her hair sweeps itself away from him quickly, plastering itself down her back and covering her neck. “I… I should go.”

“The experiments—”

“Tomorrow,” she says, putting some cheeriness in her tone even though it sounds patently false. “I’ll be back in the morning. Get some sleep! That armor doesn’t make you invincible, ya know!”

Emily rolls away behind her, and he stands there in his powerful armor, speechless, unsure of what just happened.

He has the sword, the key he needs to open the portal. And Entrapta—

Entrapta is a traitor. The worst kind of liar, when she said not to keep liars around, that they needed to be punished. Well, let her run off to Bright Moon with her fellow princesses, let her abandon him. Catra will help him win the war instead, and then she will meet him on the battlefield and she will _see_.

He swallows, running a hand down the chest of the armor that she built for him. His fingers linger over the crystal that powers it, bright pink with First Ones writing on it, and for the first time he really studies it.

He recognizes the crystal as an exact match to the marking on the back of his neck just as Catra activates the portal.

Adora figures out pretty quickly that the portal-world isn’t perfect, even though Catra is there. It feels… empty, somehow. And then she remembers. She makes her way to Bright Moon, fighting off this version of Catra with her damaged body, and finds her friends there.

Well, they don’t know that they’re her friends at first, but still. Their marks are still the same. They help her, like always. They go to Entrapta in Dryl, who helps them as long as she’s able, and Adora discovers the truth.

_“Whoever shuts the portal down can’t leave. They’ll be trapped between realities, possibly forever.”_

She has to sacrifice herself.

It was always going to have to end this way, wasn’t it?

And she’s fully prepared to do it, even though it _hurts_ to think about leaving Glimmer and Bow and, yes, even Catra, _especially Catra_ , behind. She’s ready. She forces herself to be ready.

But Queen Angella goes instead.

“It’s never been easy,” she says to Adora, as they’re talking about what will happen to whoever turns the portal off, “being an immortal whose soulmate wasn’t. I got to see Micah again, and I’m grateful for that, no matter what else happens. I’m grateful that Glimmer got to see him again, even if it wasn’t really real.”

She hugs Adora, runs her hand down her back where Adora’s soul-mark rests, huge and bright and covered by her clothes. She cries, touching a hand to the mark at the hollow of her throat and thinking on the perfect unreality she’s killing, but she’s brave, even as she flies up to where the portal waits for her.

“Take care of each other,” she whispers, reaching for the sword, and they’re surrounded by light.

Adora wakes back up in Hordak’s sanctum, reality restored and She-Ra’s sword ready to be used, and she makes a vow that she will never, _never_ let her feelings for Catra get in the way of people’s lives again. Angella’s death will mean something. It _has_ to.

For the first time ever, Catra looks afraid of her. And Adora doesn’t mind that as much as she thought she would.

The signal has been sent out to Horde Prime.

Entrapta isn’t here. His—he won't let himself think the word. _She_ isn't here.

Hordak runs a hand over the back of his neck and quietly—so quietly he can pretend he isn’t thinking it—wonders to himself if it was worth it.

The world changes. Glimmer is crowned queen, and they start losing to the Horde’s empty bots. Adora fights hard, but their technology is just too advanced.

She doesn’t see much of Catra. That’s a good thing, she thinks. Definitely a good thing.

They find the spy. They lose Salineas. It doesn’t seem like a fair trade-off, and in the end, Glimmer is still mad at her for reasons Adora doesn’t understand. _She’s_ not the one learning dark magic from _Shadow Weaver_ , after all.

Then, the scorpion-clawed princess appears in Bright Moon’s court asking for help, and Adora witnesses her first soul-marking ceremony.

It’s not an actual formal ceremony, Bow had explained to her once. But when two soulmates officially meet, their marks appear to them in the colors that everyone else already sees, often glowing slightly. Scorpia and Perfuma wouldn’t notice by themselves, since their marks are behind their ears, but Sea Hawk does, shouting “They’re soulmates! Look!” and joyfully pushing them toward each other.

“Wh-what’s a soulmate?” Scorpia asks, holding her claws up defensively.

Perfuma’s mouth hangs open in shock. “But—but we’ve fought in battle before!” she stammers.

Bow shrugs. As the son of historians, he’s the unofficial soulmate expert at court. “Soulmate magic is complicated. I guess, technically, you two have never met before now, right? You’ve never had a real conversation. Maybe just fighting doesn’t count.”

“I-I guess,” Perfuma concedes, looking Scorpia up and down while Sea Hawk excitedly explains the soul-mark to her. “Well, that’s… neat.”

“‘Neat’?” Bow exclaims. “You just met your soulmate!”

Sea Hawk shoves them closer together, and Scorpia accidentally stings her soulmate, which seems awful but is actually kind of funny from an outsider perspective. Adora wants to stay and watch—how do soulmates that barely know each other, soulmates that used to be enemies, act?—but she has to go with Bow to find Entrapta and save the planet, no matter what Glimmer says.

She has to do what’s right. She’s staked everything on it, after all.

Beast Island is a nightmare of monsters and fear, no doubt about it, but what’s almost worse is what they find out about themselves while they're there. Bow is constantly doubting himself, afraid of having betrayed his soulmate. King Micah is _alive_ , and yet his soulmate is gone. And Entrapta—

_“She-Ra is the only being strong enough to withstand the destructive energy of the Heart. So, the First Ones made the sword to control her, to use her.”_

There’s no way to stop it, except to stop Glimmer from connecting Scorpia to the Black Garnet.

_“When the weapon is activated, it will channel all its power into you. You don’t get to refuse.”_

They have to get back to Bright Moon, but Entrapta won’t go easily. “Everything back there with the princesses and then with… Hordak,” she stumbles over the name, “was so confusing. I just wasn’t suited for friendship, or for soulmates. I belong here.”

Adora doesn’t even have time to contemplate what Entrapta’s just said. They have to get out of here. Entrapta’s eyes are gray, and the vines tangle around her, and everything feels hopeless as they try to rescue her and fight their way out. Micah has lost his soulmate, and Bow has lost faith in his. They have to go before they succumb again.

Adora should be feeling the hopelessness, too—if anyone’s ever had a hopeless soulmate situation, it’s her—but she can’t afford it right now. Not when the Heart is so close to being ready for use. She lures in Entrapta with the First Ones ship, and they’re on the run to save the world.

She just hopes they’re not too late.

The time of victory is almost at hand, and Horde Prime is on his way. Hordak should be filled with confidence. To a certain extent, he is, until that shapeshifter exposes the lie.

“I was looking forward to meeting this Entrapta character before I left Bright Moon,” Double Trouble tells him, when he’s already vibrating with rage at the intrusion of his privacy. “But of course, as you know, she wasn’t there.”

His eyes widen. “What did you say?” he asks.

They blather on, about Entrapta’s sentencing and Catra’s betrayal, and he stands there in silence until they leave. Without thinking, he raises his arm cannon, the one that brought him to near-victory, and destroys his sanctum. He lets tears fall from his eyes for a brief moment.

It was all true. Everything Entrapta said, it was true. She didn’t lie, and Catra sent her to Beast Island to die. She sent his… his _lab partner_ to die.

He wipes angrily at his eyes, and he plans. Big Brother is coming, but that means little now, in the face of this betrayal. He has a higher priority.

First, Catra must pay.

Catra rips the crystal out of his armored chest, and he swears he can feel the sting of its loss, echoed on the back of his neck, just before he’s knocked unconscious.

It’s gone. Entrapta’s gone. He gives in to the nothingness behind his eyelids.

“I won’t be controlled. I am not a piece of their machine,” Adora spits out, kneeling. Resisting to the last. “I am not a weapon. And I’m going to end this now!”

“No, stop! Don’t. Do it,” Light Hope stutters, glitching as _something_ tries to overtake her programming. Memories seem to flood her vision. “Do it—don’t. Don’t.”

She pushes back against the energy threatening to consume her while Light Hope struggles against herself. She can’t be a part of this; she has to end it somehow. For the Rebellion, for her friends. For everyone that fought for Etheria. For Mara.

Something snaps into place. Light Hope’s hand falls, and her eyes widen. “Do it,” she whispers.

Adora shatters the sword.

Her back screams in agony, in the same spot where Catra once scarred her, in the same spot where her soul-mark lies, but it’s done. It’s broken, and she’s free. The stars surround her, and they're no longer in Despondos, but it's done. The planet is safe.

And She-Ra is gone.

Horde Prime comes for him.

“Why can I not see your thoughts?” he whispers delicately, cupping Hordak’s face in his hands. Hordak flinches, feeling it as Horde Prime combs through his thoughts, his memories, like someone would skim through sheets of paper. “I see now. You have given yourself a name. You tried to create an empire of your own. There was even a time you wished I would not come for you, is that so?” His hand drifts over the empty spot where the crystal rested. “When you met your little,” Horde Prime tests the unfamiliar word on his lips that's taken from Hordak's memories, the word he secretly thought but was too afraid to say out loud, “…soulmate?”

“No, brother,” Hordak gasps, desperate. “I did it, all of it, for you.”

“You have forgotten who you are!” Horde Prime shouts. “You truly think you are worthy to stand beside me, could be _equal_ to me? I made you in my image, but you have become an abomination! And so, you must be reborn.”

He feels as one of Horde Prime’s hair tendrils slots into the port at the back of his neck. For years, he has imagined what it would be like to rejoin the Hive Mind. He never imagined such pain would accompany it.

He screams, and all is darkness.

The mark on her spine pulses every time she thinks of the broken sword. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, not the way it has in the past, not the way her heart hurts, but it’s like there's a presence she can’t get rid of. Is it Catra’s, or She-Ra’s? She doesn’t know.

She-Ra is gone, but they still have to fight against Horde Prime’s forces. His robots are merciless and quick, and Adora doesn’t quite know how to go on without the sword. But they make it, away from the bots and out to space. Toward Horde Prime. Toward Glimmer.

She lingers near Bow during the first few hours after takeoff, while Entrapta runs around in a frenzy, fixing the ship here and there. “Are you okay?” she asks.

He tightens his fists at his sides but gives her a grim smile. “We’re going to get Glimmer back.” There's no trace of doubt in his tone, like he can't afford for doubt to exist.

“I know we are,” she says.

He lets her reach over and take his hand, and eventually he relaxes a little.

They’re getting close to Prime’s ship when the message comes through, giving them coordinates where they can receive Glimmer. Catra’s voice is rough and scared, reminding Adora of when they were kids, but there’s no time to react, not even when she apologizes for all she’s done.

_“Just listen! Adora… I’m sorry. For everything.”_

Adora isn’t even sure of how she _should_ react, but she feels… scared. For Catra?

Yes, of course, for Catra. For the friend she could never really give up on, even before she knew they were soulmates. Even when she did those terrible things.

Bow holds onto Glimmer for less time than Adora expected, letting her cry into his chest, before letting go of her. For once, he seems angry with her, though relieved to have her safe. But Adora can’t focus on that. There are bigger, more important problems. Like Horde Prime. Like Catra.

Catra saved Glimmer. Catra apologized. Catra sacrificed herself. Catra…

“She said she wanted to do one good thing in her life,” Glimmer says. “She said she was doing it for you.”

All things become pure under Horde Prime’s light.

The clone is pure now.

Bow forgives Glimmer, in the end, after living through a ridiculously dangerous crystal refuel mission. But Adora still can’t stop thinking about what they’re leaving behind, to a fate probably worse than death.

“Look, I know this is gonna sound crazy and dangerous, and I know Catra was our enemy and she’s done a lot of bad things and hurt a lot of people, but—"

“You wanna go back for her,” Glimmer finishes knowingly.

“I can’t just leave her there. I have to try.” She looks at her and Bow, and she braces herself to tell the truth for the first time. To say it out loud. “Catra is my soulmate.”

Bow hugs them both. “It was kind of obvious,” he tells her, smiling. “We just figured you didn’t want to talk about it. Considering, you know, deadly enemies and all.”

“You were probably right,” she admits. “Back then, I couldn’t talk about it. Just… can we try?”

So, they try. It’s maybe the hardest thing she’s ever done, to try to break Catra’s conditioning—besides shattering the sword—and Catra looks broken in a way she’s never seen her before, her eyes fluorescent green and utterly empty. Adora almost tells her the truth, almost tells her about their soul-marks to try to break the chip’s control, but something stops her.

It’s not what Catra needs right now. She needs a promise. She needs someone to stay. She needs to be saved, without any new problems to solve or questions to ask.

And Adora can do that. Adora can save her. Because she has to. Because she needs her, too.

So, she does, and she fights back even when all seems lost, and she gets Catra back. She-Ra is alive and well, and Horde Prime _miscalculated_.

They bring back the Horde clone with them as well, the one Entrapta keeps calling “Wrong Hordak.” “I still don’t understand why you’re keeping a list of clones that might be Hordak,” Glimmer says, exasperated, as Darla flies them away as fast as possible.

Entrapta ducks her head and doesn’t speak.

But Adora remembers. She holds onto Catra, still unconscious in her arms, and thinks back to Beast Island. The way she had said Hordak's name. “He’s your soulmate, isn’t he?” she asks softly.

The princess’s hair weaves itself around her body, like a self-hug. She nods.

Bow gasps. “Are you sure?”

She turns, wordlessly, and her hair parts itself at the nape of her neck to expose the soul-mark. It’s a brilliant, shining pink crystal, with First Ones writing on it, that extends from midway down her neck to the very top of her back. "It's from the crystal I gave him."

“It says ‘LUVD,’” Adora reads aloud. “‘Loved’? Oh, Entrapta.”

“I didn’t tell him,” Entrapta murmurs. “I didn’t think he would want a soulmate. And he didn't even know what it—he thought it was just a defect. I was scared, and then I lost my chance. I lost him.”

Adora clutches Catra closer to her. “You’ll get him back. You will.”

“How do you know?” she asks plaintively.

“Because,” she searches for an answer, “because we can’t give up on our soulmates. We have to believe they’ll find their way back to us. And just maybe, they will.”

Catra stirs in her arms, brought back from death itself, and Entrapta looks a little more hopeful than before.

The clone finds the crystal on the floor, in one of the clone storage rooms that the She-Ra and her forces ransacked. Something about it—its stunningly pink glow, the strange writing on it—pushes him to pick it up.

He sees something in his head, a fleeting image. A woman, with long, purple hair and bright eyes and a warm smile.

The back of his neck tingles, near the defect that never goes away, no matter how many purifications Horde Prime has him undergo. He forces himself to move on. But he keeps the crystal, for some reason he can't explain. And he doesn't tell Horde Prime.

Adora can’t bring herself to tell Catra that they’re soulmates. It’s funny, how many times she held her tongue on the battlefield because she knew it would just make Catra angrier. Now, Catra is on their side and she can tell her anytime she likes, but something keeps stopping her.

 _Fear_ , whispers the voice in her head, and she tries to ignore it. _You’re afraid. What if you tell her, and she still doesn’t want you the way you want her?_

Entrapta removes the control chip on Catra’s neck, and Adora is there the whole time. It feels a little uncomfortable to be there with her and hold her hand, a little too raw and new, but the look in Catra’s eyes won’t let her leave. So, she stays; she made a promise, after all.

They meet Melog and discover the truth of Horde Prime’s weakness. Catra becomes... a little softer, a little kinder, a little more understanding during their return journey. After, they finally get back to Etheria, and it’s worse than Adora could have imagined. Spinnerella, Micah, Mermista, Scorpia… all gone.

“‘There is no room for soulmates under Horde Prime’s light,’ Spinny told me,” Netossa says. She's not sobbing, but only just. “You should have seen her, she was so empty inside. Like she wasn’t in there at all.”

Perfuma is also distraught. “I just… let Scorpia go!” she rubs her tears away. "She saved us! But… but now she's under Prime's control, and when she looks at me, she doesn’t even _see_ me. We had just started to get to know each other!”

For once, Sea Hawk is perhaps the calmest. “We will get them back,” he says, resolved. “Horde Prime’s chips are not impenetrable. We will get Mermista back, and all the others. We have to be able to save them.”

“It can be done,” Adora says, gesturing to Catra. “Entrapta’s still figuring it out, but it can be done.”

Catra looks down, shy among all these former enemies and stinging from Frosta's punch, and Adora feels a strange surge of protectiveness in her chest. She saved her from Horde Prime; she can save the universe, too. She can do this.

The clone lets himself drop into the memories, while Horde Prime is consulting his former host bodies.

It’s a dangerous decision, but he must know more about this woman that exists in his flashes of memory. She smiles at him while sparks fly in the background, and something in him feels both whole and incomplete just by thinking of her.

_Entrapta._

That was her name, he's sure of it. And he had his own name, too, he thinks… even if that would never be allowed with Horde Prime. Something about this flash of a memory makes the voice in his head insist that he once had a name.

At the thought of Horde Prime, he’s pulled from the memories. Horde Prime, he is suddenly sure, tried to erase those memories. The same way he stored away these memories of his former selves, to be consulted at his whim but hidden from everyone else. He controls everyone's thoughts, ideas, memories. Even the clone’s own memories are not open to him—he has to force his way into remembering, and there are so many gaps to his memories.

“ _Hordak_ ,” he remembers this Entrapta woman calling him, and he flinches from the name when Horde Prime calls for his attention.

No. Horde Prime knows all. Horde Prime protects them and betters the universe through his light. This Entrapta woman is a figment of his imagination, and he must never think of the name “Hordak” again.

They get Spinnerella back. They go to Mystacor, with Shadow Weaver and Castaspella’s help, to find some way to stop the Heart before Prime can use it. Adora finds herself protecting and being protected by Catra, like old times. But they’re not kids anymore. Sacrifices have to made, like always.

She takes the failsafe into her chest. There’s no other choice to make.

But it must still be the wrong choice, somehow, because Catra’s pulling away from her.

He notices the woman with some sort of handheld technology near the spire; he doesn’t know how the other clones don’t see her. But he’s drawn in, grabbing her by the arm and demanding to know who she is. She looks… familiar, though it hurts him to think of it. The woman he had told himself to forget. “Why do I know your face?” he whispers.

“Hordak?” she asks, eyes wide, her voice vulnerable and pleading.

“No, do not say that name to me,” he flinches. “I have no name.”

But the crystal in his hand seems to glow even as he says it, like it’s revealing his lie. He opens his palm to show her, and her eyes widen. “What have you _done_ to me?” he asks brokenly.

“You do remember me,” she gasps, folding her hand over his, the crystal held between them. “I knew you would!”

One of her allies, a horse with wings, comes to take her away. He lets her go. “Maybe then these memories, these imperfections, will leave me,” he says aloud, more to himself than to her, but she hears.

“I’m your soulmate, Hordak,” she says as she’s dragged away. “Remember that. And remember, your imperfections are beautiful!”

The word— _soulmate_ —feels familiar somehow, but the spark of memory doesn’t ignite. His eyes widen at her words nonetheless, and he lets her leave.

“What do you want, Adora?” Catra wants to know.

How is she supposed to know? It’s about what she _has_ to do, not what she wants.

“I don’t have to stay and watch,” Catra spits out when she says as much.

“Catra, please. Stay.” She’s on her knees, watching Catra walk away. It feels like a twisted repetition of their past—every time they’ve walked away from each other. She begs, but Catra doesn’t stop. Catra’s _leaving_ her.

“You’re my soulmate,” she whispers, when Catra is out of sight. “Catra, you're my soulmate.”

She sits there in the darkness for a moment, unsure of what to do. Catra is gone. Horde Prime is going to use the Heart. She’s the only one who can use the failsafe, stop it all, and fulfill Mara’s mission from a thousand years ago. She'll probably die in the process.

The mark on her back gives off a stabbing pain, and she lets herself cry.

The princess whimpers and cringes, kneeling beside the clone as Horde Prime brings her onto his ship. Her attempt to free the chipped Etherians has failed. Etheria is nearly ready—its Heart will be activated and used to cleanse the universe, for the glory of the Horde. The glory of Prime.

“You’re just in time to witness the end of your world,” Prime says to her over his shoulder. She shudders all over.

The clone looks unsteadily at her, conflicted. He's concerned for her, even though he shouldn't let himself be.

She looks so afraid.

_”You’re worth more than what you can give to other people. You deserve love, too. You’re so close, Adora.”_

Mara's words keep echoing in Adora’s ears, even as she gets more and more shaky on her feet from the venom of the First Ones' creature.

Catra’s there. Catra came back. To _save her_. To sacrifice herself, again.

She goes back for Catra, the way she’s always going to go back for her. It’s inevitable.

But Shadow Weaver sacrifices herself instead, to let them get to the Heart. “You’re welcome,” she grins, her mask gone, the mark on her face burned and scarred beyond all recognition. And then she explodes in a burst of light, taking the creature with her.

Adora lets Catra clutch onto her and keep her going forward. She lets Catra promise to stay with her at the Heart, even when it’s probably only more dangerous for her. Everything hurts, and the failsafe in her chest is corrupting. Prime’s virus makes it impossible for her transform. She won’t survive this, she knows.

But she can have one more beautiful wish.

“Dispose of her now!” Horde Prime orders.

The clone looks at her, at the fear in her body language. There are tears in her eyes, and she shuts them so she won’t have to watch him destroy her.

 _Entrapta._ He knows her face, her voice, her mind. He remembers, he has remembered ever since he picked up the crystal, even when he didn't want to. And he cannot, _will not_ , hurt her.

He takes a deep breath, swings the arm cannon, and aims it at his god. Before he can talk himself out of it, he fires, and Prime collapses.

Entrapta opens her eyes, slowly, and he feels her gaze on his back as he strides across the room to take his maker by the throat and dangle him over the ledge.

“I am not your brother. You made me in your image, but I am more than that! I gave myself a name, I made a life of my own, I made—” he looks over his shoulder at her and smiles. She watches, breathless, and the back of his neck aches wonderfully. “A friend. I met my _soulmate_ , and you will not take that away from me again. I am Hordak, and I defy your will!”

He drops Horde Prime down, down, and Entrapta is laughing and rushing toward him. “You did it! I knew you could!”

It’s the last thing he knows—the sound of her laughter—before Horde Prime’s presence invades, overwhelming his mind and overtaking his body.

Her wish for the future is beautiful, and perfect, but it isn’t _real_. And it can’t last.

She’s going to die.

But Catra won’t let her go. Catra takes her by the hand and pulls her out of her internal prison, begging for her the way Adora begged when she left. “I’ve got you. I’m not letting go,” Catra whispers in her ear, and it feels true. She feels… held.

“Don’t you get it? I love you. I always have," Catra's voice breaks, and she hugs Adora's limp form to her a little tighter. "So please, just this _once_ , stay! Stay.”

Adora forces herself awake. She forces herself to hold onto Catra tighter, to cling to consciousness. “You love me?” she asks in her shock. The mark on her back is pulsing, but it doesn’t feel painful like the First Ones’ creature’s venom rushing through her veins. It feels good, amidst all the bad things surrounding them.

“You’re such an idiot,” Catra mumbles, laughing a little.

Adora feels a smile, weak but steady, come over her face. “You’re my soulmate, Catra. I love you, too.”

And then Catra is cupping her face. Catra is kissing her, a kiss without any past hatred or bitterness between them and instead only full of affection and love. And she feels alive again. Reborn.

She-Ra’s power engulfs her, and she makes the world anew. She nullifies the Heart, and she makes the planet green again, and then, then, she goes after Prime.

"Though all is reduced to rubble, Prime shall rise again. So it has been, and so it always shall be!"

"No. You're wrong. It's time for you to go." She reaches forward, presses her hands to Hordak's face, and sets him free of Prime. She doesn't purify him. She just cleanses him.

Prime will not haunt them, ever again.

_“I remember you.”_

She-Ra helps Hordak rise to his feet, and then he’s attacked by something that’s moving at high speed. Entrapta clings to his waist, laughing triumphantly, her arms around him. They spin helplessly in a hug. His first.

Still holding on to him, Entrapta lets her hair drift up to touch the back of his neck, over the mark of the crystal. “We have so much to talk about,” she says, and he finds himself smiling with her.

They do have a lot to talk about. He lets his hand drift back to where her hair is, touching his mark. “I thought it was a defect,” he says. "For so long. And then... I couldn't say it aloud. It was easier to believe that it was a defect, that _I_ was a defect."

“It wasn’t,” she says, gripping him tighter. “You’re not a defective. You’re my soulmate.”

“And you’re mine,” he replies. Years before, when the Scorpions had explained soul-marks to him, he'd never imagined such a thing for himself. Clones weren't meant to have one perfect match, and yet... here she is.

He means to say something else, but before he can, Entrapta lifts herself up using her hair and kisses him. He's too startled to respond much, though his arms do tighten around her. It's a brief, sweet kiss, borne from relief and joy. When her lips slacken and pull away, Entrapta retreats hastily, removing her hair and her hands from his body and backing up a few steps. "Sorry," she says quickly. "Was that too much?"

Hordak blinks rapidly, then shakes his head. "No," he says honestly, surprising even himself. "It was... good. It felt right."

She beams.

Before she walks away, Hordak locks eyes with She-Ra and nods. Two non-Etherians that didn’t belong, that came from different worlds. But now they've found their belonging. With their friends. With their soulmates.

Adora nods back, smiling. She walks to the edge of the cliff, detransforming, and waits. Catra quickly joins her, followed by Bow and Glimmer, and they sit and talk and plan for the future. And Hordak stays with Entrapta, and listens to her talk about all that he's missed while he was gone, and his neck prickles, but in the best way.

“So, soulmates, huh?” Catra asks later that evening. Bow's explained the meaning of the soul-marks to her now, and she's curious. Melog purrs contentedly at her feet.

Everyone has all gathered around the huge bonfire, eating dinner, laughing, sharing stories. They’ll head back to Bright Moon tomorrow, for celebrations that Adora is sure will last for days if not weeks. Then, people may start to go their separate ways. She doesn’t know where Prime’s clones will go, or those who used to be part of Hordak’s Horde, but Glimmer will offer them a place, at least. Maybe some will want to leave this planet, but they’ll go with freedom and autonomy. Everyone else can stay, to find their own place on Etheria.

And Adora? She’s here, with her soulmate and her best friends, and she grins, blushing with embarrassment. “You heard that, huh?”

“Always wondered what that stupid mark was,” Catra murmurs, leaning in for an easygoing, almost lazily slow kiss.

Adora kisses back, feeling warm and right and happy. _“What do you want, Adora?”_ Catra had asked, only a day or so ago. She hadn’t known. All she'd ever known was sacrifice and duty. But she knows now.

She wants this.

"I can't believe that's our soul-mark. I always hated that stupid sword," Catra tells her, when they break apart. "It tore us apart."

Adora shakes her head, happier than she ever thought she'd be. Maybe the sword did lead her to the Rebellion, away from Catra, but it got them here, too. "No. It brought us back together."

"You're so cheesy. I love that about you," Catra snickers at her, and then they're kissing again. Maybe her beautiful wish for the future isn't so far away after all.

Hordak and Entrapta sit by the fire together, discussing plans and experiments. She wants to return to Beast Island, to retrieve a bot she left there. “And there’s so much First Ones tech to look at!” she marvels. “So much to preserve and clean up.”

“I could… begin, there,” he says haltingly.

“Begin what?” she asks, looking up at him. The other princesses around them are engaged in their own conversation, but the one from Salineas is watching them out of the corner of her eye.

“My service,” he says.

“Service?” Entrapta exclaims. “Hordak, you don’t have to serve anyone anymore! Prime is gone. You beat him, like I knew you would.”

He shakes his head. “Not that kind of service. But… I built the Horde, all those years ago, to serve a god that turned out to be a monster. He wanted me to kill you.” He takes a strand of her hair in his hands, holding it in his lap, and he strokes it with his thumb. “I thought he wanted to improve the universe, when in truth he wanted to destroy it. I did not know better then, but I do now. The Horde hurt this planet for many years. I should do… something, to make up for the damage the Horde inflicted on Etheria under my direction.”

“Oh.” She brightens. “Well, then there you go! We can run experiments on the First Ones tech _and_ we can clean the island up and make it safer, as part of your, uh, service!”

He looks around them, surveying the people sitting nearby. Adora and Catra are seated together on a log, and next to them is the Queen of Bright Moon and her own soulmate, who are hugging. Catra and Adora are smiling at each other; they are united. Shadow Weaver could never have kept them apart, no matter how much she wanted to. The universe could not keep them apart.

Closer to him and Entrapta, Scorpia laughs with the princess of Plumeria at some joke. He notices that they share the same red rose marking behind their ear. It seems the Scorpion princess found out the meaning behind her mark, after all.

The princess of Salineas looks at him over the shoulder of her mate, a man with a ridiculous mustache but, Hordak knows from experience, great arson skills. When they lock eyes, the blue-haired princess gives him a subtle nod of grudging respect, having overheard his conversation with Entrapta, and he returns it.

Others sit near them, people he hardly knows but recognizes from battles: the Queen’s father, rescued somehow from Beast Island, and the young frost princess sitting next to him; the two married princesses, who seem to be teasing each other over something; even the flying horse, laying contentedly in the grass. Around them are countless clones and various Rebellion members, laughing, talking, playing. Some of them act as if Horde Prime was just a bad dream or a temporary problem to solve.

Perhaps he can never be that way. Maybe Horde Prime will always linger in the back of his head: a nightmare, a guilt-laden nostalgia he wishes he didn't have for a simpler time, a life of servitude and the absolution of following orders. But even if that does sound easier, in a terrible way, he can move on. He wants to; he will. He will live his own life and make his own decisions, with the friends he made and the name he gave himself.

“Hordak?” Entrapta gains his attention. “Are you all right?”

“I am fine,” he responds distractedly.

A tendril of her hair pulls at his face gently, directing him to look at her instead of all the people around him. “You’ll do your service,” she says, her voice earnest and kind. “And then we’ll have the freedom to live our own lives. To be lab partners. To be soulmates.”

“I don’t even know how to do that,” he chokes out, emotional despite himself. “I barely know what that means.”

“Me neither,” she shrugs, genuine to a fault in that captivating way of hers. “I’ve never been good at friendship, or anything like that.”

“That is not true,” he says roughly, his hand moving to rest on her shoulder without him intending to do so. “You were my first friend.”

Entrapta’s eyes widen and she squeals. “Oh, Hordak! That is so sweet!” She leans in, wrapping her arms around him in yet another hug.

He shifts uncomfortably at the affection, but doesn't want to pull away. “It is the truth,” he offers. “You are a good friend.”

“Then it’s settled,” she says into his chest, before pulling back and grinning at him. “We’ll figure out this whole ‘soulmate’ thing together. Okay?”

He looks around again, but this time with a hint of a smile on his face. All of these people have been torn apart by war, yet they have managed to find each other. Adora and Catra were enemies; Scorpia and Perfuma once fought on opposite sides; Spinnerella was torn away from Netossa, just as Mermista was from Sea Hawk; yet, they have all found each other. They are all together, just as he is with Entrapta. She leans forward and presses a kiss to his lips, as if to remind him of that fact.

He is no longer just the clone with a meaningless, defective marking on the back of his neck. That is his soul-mark, the brilliantly pink crystal that united them and brought back his memories of her.

It means something, now. And they have all the time in the universe to find out what exactly that meaning is for them.

“Together,” he agrees.

**Author's Note:**

> What happens after this, probably: Hordak shows up to his "community service" at Beast Island with an overenthusiastic, tech-genius girlfriend and the realization that Etheria never exactly invented recycling. Adora spends her time nudging her clingy cat girlfriend off her lap and, between Catra, Bow, and Glimmer all conspiring to do Best Friend Squad Shenanigans™, trying to get them to do _something_ productive.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! If you did, please consider leaving a comment! :)


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